University of Kansas, Spring 2007
Philosophy 820: Topics in the History of Philosophy
Ann Cudd—acudd@ku.edu
Ben Eggleston—eggleston@ku.edu

Mill’s Practical Philosophy

Description: An examination of the moral, political, and social philosophy of John Stuart Mill. Works to be studied in depth include Utilitarianism, On Liberty, and The Subjection of Women. Some attention will also be given to Mill’s works on political economy and representative government, and to complementary writings of Harriet Taylor Mill.

Class schedule: Tuesdays, 2:30–4:20, in 3097 Wescoe Hall

Requirements/grading:

Here are the factors that will determine your overall grade, and their weights (in percentages):

Further information about these assignments will be provided as the course progresses, but here are the basic requirements:

1. Your term paper should be about 15–20 pages long (or in the range of 4,500–6,000 words), and should be the kind of thing a responsible philosopher working in this area might submit for publication in a reputable journal: it should offer an original contribution to the discussion of some important philosophical issue or text having to do with the practical philosophy of John Stuart Mill, building (where relevant) on prior significant work on its topic.
   • You are welcome to talk with either instructor any point in the semester about your plans for your term paper, and even to ask one or both of us to read partial or whole drafts of anything you might be working on. (Be sure to allow plenty of time for this—not only for one or both of us to read your work, but also for you to revise your paper in light of our comments.) We encourage you to make your paper the culmination of a semester of gradual progress, rather than a large burden to be discharged at the end. Obviously that works best when it happens voluntarily, but to ensure some minimal steps in this direction, we have worked out the following schedule of term-paper-related events.
   • By the end of Monday, April 9, you should e-mail both of us a short account of your plans for your term paper. It does not have to be long (one or two hundred words could suffice), and you do not have to have made up your mind about what your term paper is going to say—on the contrary, your plan should be a preliminary one, open to revision upon discussion. After we receive your e-mail message, one or both of us will reply with written comments or a suggestion that we meet to talk about your plans. Of course, you are more than welcome, at any time, to initiate a meeting with one or both of us to discuss term-paper ideas, or to discuss such ideas with us periodically throughout the semester. This April 9 deadline is just meant to ensure that you think about your term paper enough to put something in writing by then.
   • By the end of Monday, April 23, you should e-mail both of us a bibliography of the main primary and secondary sources that you will be discussing or drawing on.
   • Your paper will be due, in hard copy, to both of our mailboxes at 12 noon on Monday, May 14.
2. Your presentation should be based on a paper you write of not more than 1,000 words, which you can just read out loud; you should circulate your paper to everyone in the class (including the instructors) at least 24 hours in advance of your presentation. Your paper should critically comment and possibly imaginatively enlarge on the assigned reading for the day. After you present your paper, questions and discussion will ensue. You will be graded on the quality of your paper and the quality of your responses to questions and comments about it.
3. Good class participation consists of offering intelligent, relevant, and helpful comments and questions. You should be an active discussant and should feel free to introduce your own perspective and concerns into the discussion; at the same time, however, you should not think that more participation is always better. Ideal class participation involves not only being willing and able to contribute; it also involves being respectful of others’ time and interests, and being sensitive to those occasions when a particular topic or thread would be more appropriately pursued outside of class.

Books to buy:

• John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, edited by John M. Robson (Penguin Books, 1990)
  • Here is the publisher’s web site for this book: http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780140433166,00.html.
• John Stuart Mill, The Basic Writings of John Stuart Mill: On Liberty, The Subjection of Women, and Utilitarianism, edited by J. B. Schneewind and with notes and commentary by Dale E. Miller (Random House, 2002)
  • Here is the publisher’s web site for this book: http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780375759185.

Course materials on the web:

Course documents, including this syllabus, will be available on the web site for the course, the URL of which is

http://www.ku.edu/~utile/courses/Mill1

(If you don’t want to type in this whole thing, you can stop after ‘utile’—at which point you’ll be at Professor Eggleston’s personal web site—and then follow the links to the web site for this particular course.)

The syllabus is one of the pages at the above site, and since it will be revised and elaborated as the course progresses, we encourage you to check it online from time to time, instead of relying on a hard copy.

Office hours:

Naturally, both of us are available and happy to talk with you outside of class.

• Cudd:

Office: 3051 Wescoe (and 213E Bailey—Women’s Studies)
Phone: 4-2326 (4-2311)
Hours: Wednesdays, 1:30–3:30

• Eggleston:

Office: 3070 Wescoe Hall
Phone: 4-2332
Hours: Tuesdays, 1:30–2:20, and Wednesdays, 11–11:50

Schedule:

January 23:

• course introduction
• Mill, Autobiography (this should be read in its entirety before the first class)

January 30:

• Mill, “Remarks on Bentham’s Philosophy” and “Bentham”
  • These can be downloaded from the collection of Mill’s works in the Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Liberty (http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/Author.php?recordID=0172). Download volume X of the Collected Works—a huge PDF file—and then print the following pages:
    • “Bentham”—pp. 3–18
    • “Remarks on Bentham’s Philosophy”—pp. 75–115
  • The Liberty Fund also sells its own printing of this volume: http://www.libertyfund.org/details.asp?displayID=1993.
  • This is part of what the Liberty Fund sells as the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (http://www.libertyfund.org/details.asp?displayID=1987), but it should be noted that these are reprintings of only 8 of the 33 volumes in the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill as published by the University of Toronto Press. The Liberty Fund’s volumes do not include On Liberty, The Subjection of Women, or Considerations on Representative Government.

February 6:

• class at 4:00 rather than 2:30 (this week only)
• Mill, “Coleridge” and “Whewell on Moral Philosophy”
  • These, too, can be downloaded from the collection of Mill’s works in the Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Liberty (http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/Author.php?recordID=0172). Download volume X of the Collected Works and then print the following pages:
    • “Coleridge”—pp. 117–163
    • “Whewell on Moral Philosophy”—pp. 165–201

February 13:

• Mill, A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive, book VI: On the Logic of the Moral Sciences
  • This can be downloaded from the collection of Mill’s works in the Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Liberty (http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/Author.php?recordID=0172). Download volume VIII of the Collected Works and then print pp. 831–952.
  • The Liberty Fund also sells its own printing of volumes V and VII: http://www.libertyfund.org/details.asp?displayID=1991.
  • You can also buy book VI as John Stuart Mill, The Logic of the Moral Sciences (Open Court Publishing Company, 1988).
    • Here is the publisher’s web site for this book: http://www.opencourtbooks.com/books_n/logic_moral_sciences.htm.
• presentation by Matt Waldschlagel

February 20:

• Mill, Utilitarianism, chapters I–II (Schneewind and Miller edition, pp. 230–259)
• presentation by Aaron Dopf

February 27:

• Mill, Utilitarianism, chapters III–V (Schneewind and Miller edition, pp. 260–301)
• presentation by Courtney Gustafson

March 6:

• Mill, On Liberty, chapters I–III (Schneewind and Miller edition, pp. 1–76)
• presentation by Erin Finney

March 13:

• Mill, On Liberty, chapters IV–V (Schneewind and Miller edition, pp. 77–119)
• Elizabeth S. Anderson, “John Stuart Mill and Experiments in Living” (Ethics vol. 102 no. 1 [October 1991], pp. 4–26)
  • This article can be downloaded from J-Stor at http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0014-1704%28199110%29102%3A1%3C4%3AJSMAEI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C.
    • J-Stor is a proprietary service and you may need to be using an on-campus computer in order to access the article without charge.
• presentation by Micah Baize

March 20: no class (spring break)

March 26–27: campus visit by Wendy Donner

• Monday, March 26, 4:30 p.m.: “Autonomy and Community in John Stuart Mill” (Jayhawk Room, Kansas Union)
• Tuesday, March 27
  • Mill, The Subjection of Women, chapters I–III (Schneewind and Miller edition, pp. 121–204)
  • Wendy Donner, “John Stuart Mill’s Liberal Feminism” (in Maria H. Morales [ed.], Mill’s The Subjection of Women: Critical Essays [Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2004], pp. 1–12)
  • class session with Donner

April 3: no class (instructors at Pacific Division meeting of the APA)

April 10:

• Mill, The Subjection of Women, chapter IV (Schneewind and Miller edition, pp. 205–229)
• Susan Moller Okin, “John Stuart Mill, Liberal Feminist”
  • This is chapter 9 (pp. 197–230) of Moller’s book Women in Western Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).
  • Copies of this will be provided either electronically or in hard copy.
• presentation by Peter Montecuollo

April 17

• Mill, Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, book II, chapters I–II and book IV, chapter VII
  • These can be downloaded from the collection of Mill’s works in the Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Liberty (http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/Author.php?recordID=0172):
    • for book II, chapters I–II, download volume II of the Collected Works and then print pp. 199–234.
    • for book IV, chapter VII, download volume III of the Collected Works and then print pp. 758–796.
  • The Liberty Fund also sells its own printing of volumes II and III: http://www.libertyfund.org/details.asp?displayID=1989.
• presentation by Luke Metzler

April 24:

• Mill, Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, book V, chapters VIII–IX and XI
  • These can be downloaded from the collection of Mill’s works in the Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Liberty (http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/Author.php?recordID=0172). Download volume III of the Collected Works and then print the following pages:
    • chapters VIII–IX—pp. 880–912
    • chapter XI—pp. 936–971
• presentation by Ryan McCabe

April 30–May 1: campus visit by Dale Miller

• Monday, April 30, 4:30 p.m.: “Mill’s Utopian Utilitarianism” (Centennial Room, Kansas Union)
• Tuesday, May 1
  • Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, chapter VII
    • This can be downloaded from the collection of Mill’s works in the Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Liberty (http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/Author.php?recordID=0172). Download volume XIX of the Collected Works and then print pp. 448–466.
    • If you are interested in reading a little more by Mill on similar themes, chapter VIII (pp. 467–481) discusses closely related topics.
  • Dale E. Miller, “John Stuart Mill’s Civic Liberalism” (History of Political Thought vol. 21, no. 1 [Spring 2000], pp. 88–113)
    • This article can be downloaded from Ingenta Connect at http://www.ingentaconnect.com.
      • Ingenta Connect is a proprietary service and you may need to be using an on-campus computer in order to access this article there without charge.
    • You can also download it using this link: http://web.ku.edu/~utile/courses/Mill1/Miller.pdf.
  • class session with Miller

May 8:

• Mill, “Utility of Religion”
  • This can be downloaded from the collection of Mill’s works in the Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Liberty (http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/Author.php?recordID=0172). Download volume X of the Collected Works and then print pp. 403–428.
• presentation by Brad Musil